Street Fighter The Complete History review

I received a copy of Street Fighter: the Complete History last Christmas from my wife and I've been meaning to write a review of it ever since.

Street Fighter: the Complete History by Chris Carle is a history book that chronicles the birth of Street Fighter in the arcades and follows it to the release of Street Fighter IV. But is it really the COMPLETE story of Street Fighter? Partially yes. The writer mainly focuses on Street Fighter's presence at the arcade and it's influence on gaming subcultures throughout the years. He draws from his own experiences with the games as well as other figures from the game game industry. Unfortunately there is no commentary from the Capcom developers themselves on how the games and characters were created or what they may have thought of Street Fighter's influence on the gaming world. There is very little mentioned of the story cannon other than some of the more popular characters basic struggles, such as Ryu or Chun li.

The book is essentially a nostalgic scrapbook of sorts. I use the term scrapbook because of the seemingly random mishmash of art pieces used throughout the book, ranging anywhere from official game artwork to Udon comics to fan tributes. Though the selection seems random, the entire book is in full color and the pages and binding themselves are of high quality. The page layouts are nicely done and the writing seems to flow a lot like an online article (not necessarily a bad thing). This is likely because the author is an editor for IGN. Even if you don't like the writing though this book will double as a nice art book for your collection, albeit a bit unorganized.

As a fun sort of bonus, there are some mini articles throughout the book such as how to create Guile's trademark hairstyle yourself and interviews with professional cosplayers. It makes for some nice breaks in the reading, even though it will probably only take you a few hours to get through it all.

For those who grew up with arcades the book is a delightful walk down memory lane but there will probably be very little that you didn't already know. If you're new to Street Fighter or to fighting games in general this book is a great chronicle of history that will educate you on the roots of the genre.

The book may not be a must have but it would make a great addition to any Street Fighter fans collection.


For a deeper look into the developmental history you should check out:

Street Fighter The Eternal Challenge - This book published by Udon comics goes into great detail about each game release and lists the specific gameplay changes made for each version. There are also interviews with members of the Capcom art design and development teams where they explain their thought processes on character design and why certain gameplay choices were made. Also featured are the character biographies for each character in the Street Fighter series at the time it was published. The first half of the book is also an art book showing each piece of official art organized by character. There's even a gallery of Street Fighter merchandise you could potentially seek out for your collection.

This book was published in 2005 and ends with the development staff wondering if they'll someday make Street Fighter IV. This makes both books a great set of companion pieces for any Street Fighter history buff. It may be a little hard to find at this point, but I highly recommend it or the revised version for any Street Fighter fan. I may do a more in depth review of this book at a later time.

Until then!